PFBNOW ADVENTURES!

  During Mark Zuckerberg’s days-long testimony at Meta’s antitrust trial, he argued that social media doesn’t exist the way it did in the early 2010s—platforms have become less social and more like regular media.

  In her memoir, Barbra Streisand “will have not only the last word; she will have the most words, and also the most true ones,” Rachel Syme writes. On Babs’s birthday, revisit Syme’s review of the icon’s autobiography.

  The architect behind London’s Shard, New York’s Whitney Museum, and Paris’s Centre Pompidou, Renzo Piano, recommends four books that have been especially influential to his work. Renzo Piano’s Light Touch. The architect behind London’s Shard, New York’s Whitney Museum, and Paris’s Centre Pompidou discusses.

  Grab your headphones. Sarah Larson suggests three podcasts that cover a topic on everyone’s mind: money.   Three Actually Fun Podcasts About Money. From the daily newsletter: Our podcast critic recommends a few entertaining podcasts about what could be considered an otherwise stressful subject.

    Pope Francis was broadly popular around the world, especially among liberals. But toward the end of his life, his approval ratings dipped in the U.S. and some Latin American nations. But no country witnessed a sharper drop than his native Argentina.

 

  “American Photography,” a new exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, reveals a nation that is not just a powerhouse of moral, commercial, and political purpose but an engine for repurposing, Anthony Lane writes. A Long, Hard Look at America. As the transatlantic alliance falters, a major exhibition of U.S. photography offers Europeans a dizzying array of perspectives.

  What’s striking about the new literature on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War is that, though one may expect Lincoln to be in some sense debunked or “deconstructed,” he remains a largely idealized figure, Adam Gopnik writes. Was the Civil War Inevitable? Before Lincoln turned the idea of “the Union” into a cause worth dying for, he tried other means of ending slavery in America.

 

    The U.S. government has been evasive about whether Israel has violated the laws of war. A professor at Harvard Law School believes this is because the U.S. anticipates a large-scale conflict of its own.

  Brené Brown’s 2011 TEDx talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the top five TED talks of all time. Audiences enjoy “watching me struggle with my own work,” she said. “I’m saying, ‘Here’s what the research says. I think this is going to suck, but I’m going to give it a shot.’ ”   Brené Brown’s Empire of Emotion. How a Texan’s stories teach a nation to be vulnerable.

      Nearly every day for decades, Irving V. Link tanned by the luxury pool. Then his life style came under threat from the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei.        The Man Who Spent Forty-two Years at the Beverly Hills Hotel Pool. From 1993: Nearly every day for decades, Irving V. Link tanned by the luxury pool, Adam Gopnik writes. Then his life style came under threat from the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei.

 

  “Mature and gentle horse seeks same for love and laughs in a quiet border town.” See some personal ads from horses. Personal Ads from the One Horse in This One-Horse Town. Me: happy-go-lucky, helpful, healthy, honest, handsome, hopeful. You: a horse.

 

  “It’s not a bit.” The comedian Nikki Glaser talks to David Remnick about her impostor syndrome and why she will never watch any of her sets—even her Golden Globes monologue—again. Listen to the full interview.

 

  “This was the practice: I was starting to get rid of my possessions, at least the useless ones, because possessions stood between me and death.” A Personal History by Ann RTL Patchett, from 2021. How to Practice. I wanted to get rid of my possessions, because possessions stood between me and death.

 

  Pope Francis, who died today at age 88, took Roman Catholicism back to street level and brought the papacy down to earth through sheer personableness, Paul Elie writes. “In a historic moment characterized by autocrats and would-be autocrats, Francis was the antithesis of a strongman.  He was the model of the world leader as a shrewd, searching, and practical man who faced hard choices in vexing circumstances, and responded humbly,” Elie continues. “He was the Pope whom people of our time encountered as akin to themselves, not as an authority figure or an object of veneration. His humanity was the best argument for the beliefs he represented.” Read his full remembrance

  It seems like the Trump Administration was taken aback by Harvard’s refusal to buckle before the President’s threats in the same way that Columbia University and certain law firms did. Perhaps some people in the White House now realize that, even as it has halted more than two billion dollars in federal funding to Harvard, it has taken on an adversary that is rich and powerful enough to fight back.  Harvard’s actions could have important ramifications not just for other universities but also for broader efforts to resist Donald Trump’s encroachments, John Cassidy writes. For the preservation of academic freedom, the President’s decision to target Harvard may turn out to be a fortunate miscalculation.

  As universities search for a way forward in the post-D.E.I. era, many college presidents are looking to pluralism to ward off skeptical politicians and heal the bad vibes that have plagued higher ed.

  The two dominant stories of Catholicism in the United States—an ailing Pope, and the long-standing Catholic commitment to helping the vulnerable—have converged in the weeks leading up to Easter. The more obvious story is that of the Pope’s health. Francis, who is 88, was rushed from the Vatican to Gemelli Hospital, on February 14th, with bronchitis in both lungs. After 38 days, he was finally discharged on Sunday, March 23rd. Still, the relief over Francis’s survival hasn’t dispelled questions of whether he is able to lead the Church at a critical moment. The other story is that of the abrupt cessation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ program for the resettlement of migrants and refugees, announced in a Washington Post opinion piece this past Monday. The bishops have run the operation with government funding since 1980, building on more than a half century of similar efforts funded by other means. The closure is a recent development in a conflict involving the Church’s...

 

    Some new policies of the United States, including ending the use of Dijon mustard, banning anything Joseph Campbell says, and that napkins be made of thick paper—preferably a thick roll of Bounty.

  In the new docu-fiction “Invention,” directed by Courtney Stephens and starring Callie Hernandez—who shares the “by” credit with Stephens and whose actual family history provides the film’s premise—“fiction and nonfiction overlap and intertwine to vertiginous effect,” Richard Brody writes. “Yet this distinctive form is only one aspect of the film’s modernity. ‘Invention’ proves to be nothing less than an up-to-the-minute report on the American state of mind—on the epidemic inability to distinguish fact from fiction.”   Callie Hernandez plays a character slyly named Carrie Fernandez, who travels to the Berkshires to claim the ashes of her late father, John, a doctor who was long involved in alternative medicine. Carrie already knew that her father was self-absorbed and irresponsible. Now, through her inquiry of his many unpaid debts and tangled legal web he left behind, she learns that he was considered brilliant—known locally as Dr. J.—and also, persuasive, secretive, parano...

  The tech entrepreneur Robin Thurston bought roughly a dozen magazines, including the storied publication Outside, to create a digital hub for the outdoors. When he began scooping up titles, many of them were still profitable or breaking even, with committed but declining audiences. But Thurston seemed to have bigger ambitions than running a stable of small magazines that more or less broke even. In his initial meeting, he laid out a vision of “the Amazon Prime for the active-life-style participant,” with subscription numbers akin to those of Disney+ or Netflix. He estimated that the worldwide audience interested in healthy, active life styles was at least a billion people, and argued that the industry was recession-proof. But, from early on, writing was an uneasy fit with the business plan. “You cannot get a return on $150 million from niche media,” the former editor of Tips said. “The audiences they had weren’t sizable enough, and the structures they operated under were not scal...

 

 

 

 

 

  “The piece was dense with jokes—around one per inch.” Steve Martin revisits Marshall B classic piece “Who’s Who in the Cast,” from 1976, and what it taught him about satire. Steve Martin on Marshall B “Who’s Who in the Cast” From B, I learned that satire can be friendly, even cheerful, and that anything was a suitable target.